Andrew Southall – land / city / sea works on paper

1 June - 29 June

Andrew Southall’s work has few if any boundaries, seemingly uninfluenced by external pressures or requests.

Southall approaches art of and in the moment. Within that moment there is an interest to be explored, an un-prescribed duration of exploration; and when that idea is fleshed out, exhausted, a new moment, a new idea, sensation, takes its place to be interrogated until it also has given up all that it has to offer.

The one area that the viewer may think is constant is the self-portraits, but these also are only moments of exploration, each one an individual moment that can never be revisited. Southall’s work may best be explained as a progression, a cycle an evolution of ideas continually evolving but never returning backwards.

Southall’s facility as an artist and technician is immense; to render in detail highly accurate realism, to balance complex colour combinations, or explore abstract expressions that question what is art? Southall’s work negates the question of “like” or “dislike”. The sheer breadth and weight of work leaves the viewer with no other option than that of critic, to engage with the work in critical discourse. Michael Powell, 2019

The three scapes; land, city, and sea, are part of the repertoire of moments that contribute to the substantial body of Andrew Southall’s work.

The intense exploration of rock and sand in the black and white drawings gives way to the emergence of colour; the appearance of man-made shapes; and the city spaces are born.

The rediscovery of past work then inspires the next phase of new moments, moving into sea and oceans, vessels and disasters. The imagery and mediums in these works exist in a state of flux emerging from this artist’s perpetual drive to create.